Portret van Johann Jacob Huber 1762 - 1807

Curator: Take a look at this striking image, an engraving titled "Portret van Johann Jacob Huber." It's a portrait rendered by Carl Gottlieb Rasp sometime between 1762 and 1807. Editor: The engraving feels so formal, like a stage play frozen mid-scene. The man’s caught in a perpetual 'wise sage' pose. That enormous fur collar practically screams status. Curator: The fur is interesting, isn’t it? It does add a certain… gravitas. Fur has always been associated with power, wealth. But look at the texture Rasp achieved through engraving – that dense, plush quality, almost tactile. And consider the oval frame, almost like a looking glass through which we glimpse a figure from the past. Editor: It’s fascinating how framing someone—literally putting them in a box or, in this case, an oval—influences how we perceive them. He looks almost mythical, sealed off from our touch or criticism, elevated into symbolic untouchability. The oval is itself sitting upon an architectual plinth with HUBER inscribed on it! Almost godlike... Curator: Indeed, I think the artist is certainly intending to portray the man almost as a character. One interesting choice of Rasp, as iconographer, is the slightly quizzical expression on Johann Jacob Huber’s face. A slight asymmetry in his features. A sense of internal… what? Doubt? Contemplation? Editor: That tiny flaw is so compelling! Maybe he wasn’t a 'perfect' icon. Maybe he had human-sized anxieties about his own power. I always look for the crack in the symbol, you know? And perhaps this artwork really speaks about the time of its making. How artists balanced commissioned idealizations of sitters and more sincere portraiture of actual persons, with their warts, et cetera. Curator: It certainly complicates a simple reading. I find the layering of the composition keeps pulling me back into studying how an artist might show status in subtle but knowing ways, too. Editor: Right. And me? Well, I think I want to spend a little time imagining what he was thinking right when the artist engraved his image, fur collar and all.